Big Four School

Rural schools like Big Four were closing in a county that was losing its farm people. Crosby County had 11,023 residents in 1930 and lost 451 farms during the Depression and Dust Bowl, when the drought of 1933-34 sent cotton production plunging. Its first soil-conservation district, formed in 1941, worked on crop rotation, irrigation, mesquite clearing and terraces. After a rise to 10,347 in 1960 the population fell to 9,085 in 1970 and 7,304 in 1990. Oil, found in 1955, helped steady the economy.

What the plaque says

Big Four School The community of big four lies a few miles north of Crosbyton. The W.H. Hames and M.A. Reynolds families moved here in 1902 and 1909, respectively, and four houses were built on land owned by the Morrison brothers around one windmill which supplied water for all four houses. With the coming of settlers, the parker and fowler families soon called for a school house. In 1909 Hames and S.K. Freeman built a one-room school house. In 1916 a new two-room school house was built for the growing big four community. In 1936 an auditorium was built on the school grounds to be used as a community center. Big Four School was one of five rural schools that remained in Crosby County in 1953. Critical problems confronted the rural school, including lack of financial resources, poor facilities, difficulty in maintaining students, and inability to secure qualified teachers. Rural schools existed for a specific purpose, and when the big four school could no longer compete with larger schools, it closed. The two-room school building was moved in the mid-1950s to be used as a school for the Crosbyton Independent School District's African American students. The school building later burned to the ground. The school district gave the Big Four School auditorium building to local residents with deed stipulation for use as the big four community center. The wooden building was last utilized around 1980, when it was used for Big Four club meetings. The building was turned back to the school district in 1981. With the poor condition of the auditorium building and lack of funds to restore it, the property and building was sold in 2011, resulting in the demolition of the auditorium and the erection of a new home. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 5.7 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 29 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Slaton Harvey House — 30 mi
  A 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House in the railroad town of Slaton, restored as a museum, event hall and five-room inn overlooking a working BNSF yard.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 31 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• Citizens National Bank — 5.6 mi
• High Plains Pioneer Henry Clay Smith — 5.6 mi
• Crosby County — 5.6 mi
• Crosbyton — 5.7 mi